Sometimes they don't. Yeah, you know enough to know out of your control, and you'll set the stage for something wonderful to

happen. Right, but it sort of is under your control because you're not protecting yourself. I mean, you're doing it without a net. And you know the stakes are high in some cases. I mean, not with human life. I have never killed any animal or creature in my life for any reason. I'm trying to get to the point where I'll brush away mosquitoes. That's the hardest one. But like in the horse's head or the caribou being killed in Bacchus. I had nothing to do with that. I just said, well, if it's going to happen, can I photograph it? Tell me about directing Brando.

Well,

Brando is very easy to direct, because the first thing he does is he sits down and puts his hand like that, and he's asking basically where the frame is and then he'll proceed to act with what's ever in that space and he'll just do it and you can say things to him like make it more angry make it less angry make it funny and he doesn't like to have acting talk he just you know make it louder make it softer and basically i I always worked with Brando through props, as though I know that whatever I put in front of him, he's going to use. But he doesn't panic. In other words, if, like, here I am now. Let's say a herd of buffalo would run behind me. He would, and that happened, he'd say, oh, look at the buffalo. You know, he wouldn't, he wouldn't say, well, I better get out of here. He uses anything and everything when, when they're shooting. I

never heard that idea before that he would want to know where the frame was and that he was aware of the framing and wanted to make everything work within the frame. I would think of him, the method, as being more free and emotional, and he would go where he goes, and the camera would have to follow him because he would be free.

No, but he knew what he was doing. Like, for example, in Apocalypse Now, the problem was, I mean, I'm saying wonderful things about brando but the truth is he was like a big kid in terms of like if he if you said look i don't want you to eat that ice cream he would eat the ice cream so when he came for apocalypse now he knew that he was supposed to he was got green beret colonel and he couldn't be a fat green beret colonel but he came way overweight but then he knew that and uh i won't recount the many steps of this but basically what that meant is that that's what made us shoot him in the dark with just a beam of light but he had just that beam of light but boy did he use it he poked his head in it. He poked his head out of it. In other words, whatever he was going to use, he used it creatively.

It's also, that's a great example of problem solving because you wanted the military guy to be in shape when he showed up, and he wasn't. So you shoot him in the dark, and it's iconic because of the fact that you were working around something that you wouldn't have chosen.

Right. In other words, when I first realized that he was so big, I said, why don't we go the other way to him? I said, why doesn't he be, he got big and we show him with a mango in one hand and a native girl in the other he said no no no in other words he was shy about being overweight he didn't want to my original thing is if it's raining and you can't shoot figure out how to do the scene in the rain if he's fat and he's a Green Beret guy, say he's a Green Beret guy who got fat and see him eating all the time and he's given in to his senses. You could have done it that way. But people who are overweight, be it Marlon Brando or Orson Welles, no one who's fat likes to be fat. And they're shy and embarrassed by it. And Brando is no exception. How

recent was the Vietnam War to Apocalypse Now, the filming? It

was going on, I

think.

Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, it was near the end there, but it was still going on. Wow. You know, the U.S., guy who was minister, the defense, Secretary of Defense was, what the hell was his name? He had been it twice, but they totally said no help, no helicopters, nothing American. We want nothing to do with apocalypse now. So I found the helicopters and stuff in the Philippines. Rumsford. Secretary Rumsford. He was not a good guy. No.

Would you describe yourself as confident or insecure? Well,

I'm insecure. I mean, I don't know of any artist who's totally confident. You know that you're walking on ledge that you could fall off at any time. Would

you say you're hard on yourself? All

I know is this. Right now, there isn't a human being, guys who did terrible things to me that I haven't forgiven in my totally, because I say, well, they had their reasons, I wasn't on their mind but the person that's the hardest to forgive is yourself do

you think of yourself as a perfectionist

I don't think of myself as a perfectionist, but I think I am a perfectionist. I have a counter right over there. I'm looking at it, and there's nothing on it but a coffee machine and a thing. And someone's always putting a thing of basil over there because there's not a lot of room here. And I like it the way it is, and I don't even want this beautiful thing of basil over there. I want it the way I want it. Yeah. How

different is the finished movie of Patton than your script? It's

very similar to my script. In fact, I would love someday for someone to take the movie because I shared the credit with someone else, which I don't mind. It's just like that script. I

want you to walk me through making a movie. What happens when you make a movie? How much is intentional? Who brings what? How does it change? Okay, well,

the first thing is you're getting pregnant with the movie. So like I am right now, And I'm taking an American writer that I just am a great admirer of. I just think she's the greatest is Edith Wharton. I mean, there are many American writers I admire, but many of them are women. But Edith Wharton, and she wrote a not-so book, one of the ones that is less than her massive. I mean, she made House of mirth and age of innocence and ethan from and all these but she has a screwy little book called glimpses the glimpses of the moon and i'm there's something about it fascinates me but years ago i directed uh when i was just doing the godfather everyone was offering me chances to direct an opera, direct a play. I mean, I was getting all these possible things, and I figured, well, I'll do it. I'll learn something. So I directed a play called Private Lives by Noel Coward. Wonderful play. I mean, I came to love it I directed it, but it's really a beautiful play. And I did it in a very crazy way. In other words, do you know Private Lives at all? Noel Coward play? Well, it's very funny, and it's about some two honeymooning couples looking over the French river. And it's always done with them leaning on the ballast, looking at the sea, with the audience being where the sea is, because there's all these really funny, no coward lines. And what I wanted is I wanted to do it around the other way, where you're looking at it the other way, so you're seeing them against the gorgeous feud. Movie director, you know. So I did it that way. And then there's a lot of music coming in record players and stuff so instead of them doing that i had a pianist on the apron of the stage doing it live and i did this i did this play this way and it was very successful it was very well received and i love i and I loved Noel Coward so somehow I decided I'm going to do this Edith Wharton adaptation of this movie I'm going to make as if I'm doing Noel Coward and there's no connection the only connection between Noel Coward and Edith Wharton is me so now I'm making it and I wrote a script and the ending of the Edith Wharton novel is very weak that's why it's not one of her biggest ones but it is weak but I came up with a way that's not weak and so I'm sort of just now here's exactly what I'm doing I have a script which is filled with Noel Coward songs and a sort of a style that is not unlike the private lives that I... It's as though Noel Coward adapted a Edith Wharton book and is now making it in this movie in England, which is why I'm here, you know, because I'm now actually in pre-production of that movie. So now I'm deciding what style I'm going to make. So I don't have any money because I invested all the money I borrowed to make Megalopolis is basically, it's gone, you know, I mean, it'll, I think it'll come back over 15, 20 years, but I don't have it now, so I don't have any money. So I have to do it very cheap, which I'm doing. And I'm starting to have people come over. I'm in this house where you see, which I borrowed from some person who I knew in Tulsa. And I'm sort of just working with nothing, but I'm starting to actually make the movie already, and I can see how it could work and then i feel it does work it's beautiful and these no coward songs which are 70 years old are so beautiful when even i mean people don't realize what he did i mean he those guys like cole porter and noel coward and and and Hart and, you know, Jerome Kern. I mean, these, this music is endlessly wonderful. So I'm seeing something that has no reason to exist except I love it. Yeah.

What was it about the book that fascinated you? It's the premise is so absurd and

wonderful. The premise, if I may tell you, is that, you know, in previous, marriage was always about business and affairs of state. And, you know, I mean, this idea you meet someone, you fall in love, and you get married, that's very unusual. It wasn't like that, you know and in the 30s and in the 20s the marriageable group was so specific just in other words you couldn't be part of it because you couldn't get past the butler in certain crowds so in other words you you had to have a certain education there was a a way that it had to be a certain group. And in this story, in Glimpses of the Moon, it's about this American group of these marriageable people. And because America had divorce, and many European countries didn't, what the Americans would do, they would go see people in England and in Berits and France and equally wealthy people and stuff they'd be married but they'd have affairs and then if they had an affair with someone who was wealthier than their husband or their wife they would get a divorce and and then they would marry upwards and so it was this. Well, there are two people in this crowd who are penniless. They've lost all their money. Their family lost all their money in the stock crash. Or they have all the elegance. They have all the intelligence. They have everything, but they don't have any money. And so, but they're allowed to be in the crowd because they'll help out in a way and they're accepted. And they had this crazy idea that she had the idea that why don't they just get married? And he said, well, we live on. He said, well, we'll get all these wedding gifts from our friends and they'll let us go stay at all their houses in Venice and places and stuff. And then after, you know, when the money runs out, then we'll help each other make a better match, which is what we're doing now. So basically they do it. And the movie is, of course, about the inevitable fact that now the money's running out, but they love each other. But they've made this arrangement and it's heartbreaking to them. But, of course, I won't tell you, but it's very beautiful, I think, what happens in the story. Are

all of your movies autobiographical? I

think so. You know, I'm starting to think worse. I'm starting, you know, there's two ways of viewing life. You're doing it, I'm sure. When you're young, you view it from left to right. You're a young person looking out at what the future is going to be for yourself.